News Bulletin 1393
Flooding causes temporary pipeline shutdown

ANCHORAGE, AK – The Trans Alaska Pipeline System was shutdown at 3:50 a.m. on Tuesday after experiencing a communication failure with five of the Remote Gate Valves (RGV) located between Pump Station 12 and Valdez. It is believed that heavy rainfall and severe flooding caused the failure. The outages are suspected to be caused by fiber optic cable breaks between RGV 116 and RGV 123. The OCC Controllers initiated the shutdown of the mainline in response to this communications failure. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. has dispatched technicians to the valves to assure the equipment can be operated manually if necessary. Once personnel are on scene at the valve locations and voice communication links can be established, the pipeline will be restarted. Throughput at the time of the shutdown was approximately 712,000 barrels per day.

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